One Week To Go ...

With a little more than seven days left before the election, the amazing rollercoaster that has been this year is drawing to a close. What has this year meant?

It's meant having the support of my family -- Rick, the boys and their "Vote For My Mommy" T-shirts, my mom and dad. It's meant having the support of friends that I've known for decades, and it's meant getting the support of friends I've just met. It's meant printing what seems like a million brochures. It's meant yard signs, big signs, banners, newspaper ads and recording a radio spot. It's meant playing bingo and watching Adam and Jesse flat-footin'. It's meant spaghetti lunches, a couple of brunches and too many barbeque dinners to count.

It's meant crowning Debbie's Snack Bar in Hamptonville the unofficial world headquarters of my campaign. If you want to know why, just visit the place. It's meant putting up campaign signs in the rain. It's meant hammering sign frames together. It's meant my mom and dad hitting the campaign trail all over the district, on their own. It's meant handing out a yard sign ... and then another ... and then another ... and then another. Rick's record for heading back out to the car for more signs is at least three times, and not once did he complain.

At least not to me.

What else has happened this year? In January, Rick had what he calls the most memorable experience of his career in journalism when he drove a race car at Talladega. That he did so less than three weeks after surgery is completely besides the point. I had surgery and was later found to be completely cancer free for the first time in two years. Adam hit the first home run of his baseball career and Jesse flourished at his summer art camp. Richard graduated from high school and is a freshman at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

And ... it's still tough to write these words ... Rick's dad, Sid, passed away. Sid had never smoked a cigarette, but instead developed lung cancer as the result of the Agent Orange he encountered in Vietnam. He fought the disease for four long years.

Thank you so much for all that you've done for my family and I over the past year. I'll see you at the polls.

Child Support Ceremony

District Court Judge Jeanie Houston took part in a ceremony today at the Yadkin County Court House recognizing those in the area who have never missed a child support payment. The event was hosted by the Yadkin County Department of Social Services, and coordinated by Valerie Zachary, the agency's child support attorney.

Zachary said the selection process for the ceremony started by looking for unfamiliar names on the Department of Social Services list of child support payments. It was a comment echoed by Judge Houston.

"We like these folks, because we don't know them," Judge Houston joked. "They're never in court for not paying their child support. We have a lot of people we can't say that about."

Below, Judge Houston is shown with Marcelo Mimiaga, Trent Shore, Edsel Wooten (the director of the Yadkin County Department of Social Services), Shamus Jackson and Jim Stanley.

CC Wright Elementary School Visits Court House

The questions from the C.C. Wright Elementary School third graders came almost too fast to answer.

Do you have an electric chair here?

How about a guillotine?

Can kids be put in jail?

District Court Judge Jeanie Houston fielded the questions one by one. No, there’s not an electric chair here. We don’t have a guillotine, either. She explained the differences between being charged as a juvenile and as an adult and when one youngster asked what kind of clothes she wore under her robe, Judge Houston unzipped to reveal her sweater and slacks set.

Then, Judge Houston got the chance to ask her own questions.

Does anyone here know how laws are made?

Sure enough, she got a reply that was right on the money.

How many of you would like to be police officers? Several hands, a little more than half the group, shot up. How many of you would like to be lawyers? A few more children raised their hands.

Nearly seventy students and teachers from the North Wilkesboro school took part Friday afternoon in the tour of the Wilkes County Court House, where they visited a courtroom, holding cell, clerk’s office and the register of deeds.

“I look so forward to doing this every year,” Judge Houston said later. “I love doing this and I love holding court for our Big Bad Wolf trials. The kids have an interest in what we do here that’s just incredible. A lot of times, they come in with the preconceived notions that they’ve got from TV and when they get here, they find out what the court system is really all about.”

A Huge Success!!!

This was the kind of day that just makes you feel good. I started out at the Apple Festival in Wilkes County this morning and early afternoon, and then we had our cookout tonight. Things couldn't have went any better.

We went through 180 name tags, and not everybody stopped by to get one. The huge kids' inflatable bounce-and-jump-and-climb-and-slide thingamajig (what do you call those things, anyway?!?) stayed full from the word go until we had to run everybody out to break it down at the end of the night.

The cool thing about this kind of event is the help you get in setting everything up, and we most definitely had plenty of helping hands. First of all, Rick and my dad would still be stuck trying to figure out how to set the tents up if it hadn't been for Michael Dickerson. With Michael on hand, they had the tents and the inflatable up and ready to roll in about 30 minutes or so.

Michael also helped break everything down, as did John, Shane Childress and Josh Lincolnfelt. Oh yeah ... and my nephew, Denver Rakes, picked up trash. Ted Ashley brought his monstrous cooker and cooked until he had to leave for his son's football game. Walter Shore and John Spillman took over. Donna Shore Terrell and Jo de Journette passed out name tags and my campaign decals.

My biggest thanks goes to Debbie Childress, who hosted the event. She shut her business down for those two hours, and along with Marie Ashley, daughter Shanda and daughter-in-law Candy Childress, served the food.

Now, for some pictures ...

Hearsay finally made it back home today, just in time for the cookout. He brought along pictures from some of his adventures this summer ...



Jimmy Lancaster, our pastor at Maplewood Baptist Church in Yadkinville, gave the invocation ...



Friends don't come any better than these folks. That's Artie and Cindy Greer on the right, along with Chase (on the left) and Bryce (in Artie's arms) ...



Ted Ashley, working man ...



A shot of the crowd ...



That's Una and Jim Graham with Pierre and Carol Hamel ...